The reason is to embarrass Joe Biden
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Republicans don’t give a flying fuck about facts. A search for evidence is political theater to fill time so they don’t have to actually do their job. If they had the votes they would impeach Biden and everyone else that opposes them right now.
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On point 2. “The Chosen One.”
It has been fascinating listening to Christian media since Trump’s conviction. They are really playing up how the demonic world is out to get them, how it’s important to not look at the man just vote R as that’s in line with Christian belief (their version). Trump in their messaging is the Chosen One to deliver them the country. They don’t look at Trump the man, or what he says, or his actions, just how persecuted he is by the left. Just had a thought, like a Christian bible without the gospels.
Side note: Yesterday heard a plea “Pastors you need to tell your congregation how to vote.”
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Sure, embarrassment is part, but I don’t think it’s the major thing. And, while I"m sure they’re hoping this will lead to evidence on Joe, they will, no matter what, act like they’ve found evidence. So the presence or absence of evidence itself is mostly irrelevant.
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The marriage of Republicanism and Christian fundamentalists in the 80s, which turned abortion into a religious issue using the racist specter of Great Replacement Theory, really broke the party such that they never recovered. Rather than present a coherent political front, it’s a confusing mess of what we believe and why, what is actually derived from the Bible versus what politicians and priests said the Bible says due to politics.
That’s how we get shit like the CO GOP releasing statements that all LGBTQ flags should be burned. Burning LGBTQ flags should not be a function of government. That is a function of hatred by some Christians. They forget if they’re running a government or a religion.
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That may have been the initial reason, but “the judge and jury is rigged” nonsense that you get today has nothing to do with anything that Joe Biden has done in office. Similarly, democrats chased down the Russia thing for a couple years, ended up with evidence of obstruction rather than clear Russia links, and then dropped it because they realized no one gave a shit about obstruction.
There absolutely were democrats that wanted to impeach Trump for that, and others that continued to talk about Russia, but the leadership told them to shut up and move on.
That is the difference. Hunter Biden is all that Republicans can talk about. It is all they have been talking about for 5 years. No one gives a shit outside of Republicans. Leadership has watched the base take over, and they have gone on off the rails with this crap. What they should have done once Biden was in office is said “he is being investigated by the proper groups and we will accept the results of that” and then focused on governing. No, because Trump drives the news cycle, and Trump is resentful for anyone associated with Biden, the aren’t allowed to let it go.
Nah. I don’t think Trump is driving this. I believe Hunter is a key part of the typical Fox News Cycle. It is great popcorn for guys like Ranger and CSPAN (see their posts above) as well as GOP marketing material in general.
Democrats dropped Russia because they had other things to talk about. (So many other things!!) But Republicans don’t have a lot to talk about. There’s inflation, illegal immigration, various culture wars, but nothing is as juicy as partisan scandal. Even weak-sauce “scandals” like we saw during Obama are more exciting than policy news. And yes also republicans will try to impeach Biden again, fruitlessly over this. Not to win but to insinuate blame.
The major effect is that Republicans and some Independents will use this trial to brainwash themselves into believing that “the Bidens” and “the Trumps” are equally immoral.
That way they don’t feel bad about voting for a bad guy.
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[red font] You’re forgetting: the Trumps can do no wrong. Claims to the contrary are obviously slander against the greatest business and political mind of our time.
Biden, the Clintons, and Obama…well, they’re actually corrupt, seeking to sell us out to the Chinese, or the Ukranians, or…somebody. [/red font]
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This is why Trump needs total immunity, because he’s innocent and the Deep State is waging lawfare against him.
But Biden shouldn’t get immunity, because he’s a corrupt criminal and deserves to rot in prison, if not be executed.
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Remember though that the media buried the Hunter Biden story a week before the election and that would have flipped things in Trump’s favor. There is a lot of resentment over that laptop. It’s the butterfly that led to everything else that has happened since.
And don’t forget the dick pics that MTG entered as part of the congressional record.
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Not all Republicans. As of now, I plan to vote for Trump, but I don’t like it. I really hope they are able to disqualify him somehow, and put up Nikki Haley as their candidate. Right now, though, I see Trump as the less-bad option over Biden. I don’t care for either of them. I do always make sure I vote though, even if I don’t like the choices. Maybe I’ll end up writing in Haley even if it’s Trump vs Biden.
If I even vote – which I can’t guarantee at this point – I might just write in Jaspess. 
(America needs a good intervention specialist right now.)
I don’t have any strong opinions here, but you think it was a concerted effort by the media to get Biden elected? Or was there just a lot happening, and it would be unethical to run a story of questionable veracity with a large conspiracy following?
I’m truly questioning from a viewpoint with unavoidable liberal bias, but no particular opinion on the topic. I don’t recall the media “burying” anything. I remember a lot of reporting about the laptop, and there were many conspiracy theories given varying credibility. Here’s Politico a couple weeks before the election:
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/19/hunter-biden-story-russian-disinfo-430276
More than 50 former senior intelligence officials have signed on to a letter outlining their belief that the recent disclosure of emails allegedly belonging to Joe Biden’s son “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said on Monday that the information on Biden’s laptop “is not part of some Russian disinformation campaign,” though the FBI is reportedly conducting an ongoing investigation into whether Russia was involved.
“We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails, provided to the New York Post by President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement,” the letter reads. But, it continues, “there are a number of factors that make us suspicious of Russian involvement.”
That’s simply one article, but feels like a really fair synopsis of the situation. “The laptop exists, some people say it’s disinformation, some people say it seems real.”
I truly think there’s been a multi-year phenomenon of Republicans changing the narrative to say that the laptop was maliciously denied and buried. When entered into the current Hunter trial there were numerous postings on places like /r/Republican like “HAH! They can’t deny it! The laptop is real!”
Like… yeah. Good job, you caught up.
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The laptop story got buried.
The letter was requested by the Biden Campaign and the people who signed it hadn’t even seen any of the evidence they were opining on. But the letter got more coverage in many outlets than the contents of the laptop. Twitter and Facebook both reduced the response levels on the story. NYT and WaPo both had Op Eds about how it was misinformation.
A D-labeled campaign put out information and the press ate it up without doing any due diligence because they hated Trump. (Who is admittedly VERY hateable.) Just like the Steele report.
Funny I recall the laptop story being everywhere though different outlets had different spins. Not unlike Comers comment about Hillary shortly before 2016 election.
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The problem with the laptop story is that it was intentionally leaked at the last minute, so no news outlet could validate it, check whats on it, check where it came from, or anything.
Really any “news” that is released on the 11th hour of any election should be assumed to be misinformation.
Part of the definition of responsible journalism is to not fall for that kind of shit.
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My recollection was reporting on the laptop everywhere, including reporting that it was probably disinformation and reporting that it was the thing that would get Joe Biden impeached and imprisoned. But most outlets, other than Fox News and far-right shit like InfoWars, didn’t claim that it was a smoking gun of corruption.
I wouldn’t be surprised if more liberally-biased sources like MSNBC went harder on reporting about the letter while ignoring that the letter said there wasn’t proof of Russia being behind it. MSNBC is only mildly credible, and I only sometimes use it for additional context when trying to get a variety of opinions on something.
A lot of this. It was Hunter’s laptop, which landed at a repair shop in Delaware, which that guy turned it over to Republican operatives who then started leaking out what was allegedly on the computer, which led to Rudy’s “laptop from hell” claims - which, for all the stuff allegedly on the laptop, they never did turn it over to law enforcement which seems really weird because some of that stuff allegedly on the laptop would have been obvious federal crimes that could have been prosecuted under a still-Republican led DOJ.
Fucking Deep State. It got to Rudy and everyone else so they wouldn’t get Hunter in trouble.
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I don’t think your feelings are too unusual. Just like 2016, most voters overwhelmingly dislike both candidates. They just hate the other candidate more than their own, for mostly tribal reasons and wedge issues. Picking whoever you think is the least-bad is reasonable enough.